CANON PIXMA MX310 ALL-IN-ONE W/FAX

This is mt first Canon after going through a few HP printers for my home and SOHO use. I finally justified the purchase of an all-in-one, and this one does it really well. I read many reviews including quite a few HP models and one Brother.Brother was the first one to go out. Even though the Bother had the network printing capability, the reliability and operating system compatibility turned out to be an issue based on my research. It might have worked, but why take the chance?As for HPs. I've been mostly lucky with my HP printers so far. Keep in mind that getting my hands dirty by transplanting the guts of a notebook AC adapter to replace an HP printer's AC adapter is not a hassle, but fun to me. Yes, that happened, and I used an old HP deskjet after that surgery for years without a hickup. Anyways, no more HPs, as I already have a second one, and it looks like HP all-in-ones have reliability problems.The Canon AIO is just great. Scanner is very good compared to my old Epson (which was promptly donated). You can adjust the DPI, and the software that comes with it is (get ready for a surprise) is quite useful! What a change after suffering useless HP software over the years. I love the ADF, and I use it a lot more than the platen to scan bunch of documents. No problems with any of the features so far.There are two things I rarely miss on the Canon: network printing, and auto-reverser for double-sided printing. Hey, at this price, I don't get to complain, and quiter frankly, I don't expect it at this price range. The quality is excellent, and there are more features than I neeed. Remember you trips to the library to xerox paper copies in the grad school, and remember those fancy copy machines 10 years ago? Yeah, this has more features than those *fancy* copy machines.

The Canon PIXMA MX310 is designed to be used by one or two people in a small office that requires only a few small print/copy/scan/fax jobs per day. In that realm, it performs very well. Having print, scan, copy and fax functions in a single device simplifies operations and saves a lot of desk space.I found it to be a great little machine in our study room at home. It has been pretty good to use. The PRICE of the printer ink is expensive, however, I am not running out every week to replace it like the KODAK 5100. I can go months without replacing the cartridge. Overall I am happy with the printer. I wish the quality of the print were a little better. The print speed could be better. It is a noisy printer.

I have never used this printer without running into a problem. Out of the box: beep beep beep, spend 30 minutes trouble shooting whatever it’s complaining about. Printing any document is therefore something that must be planned for, since one has to fix the printer before using it - every single time one uses it!If you plan on only occasionally printing in color, this is not the printer for you. The color is used to produce B&W and will deplete very fast. The printer will glitch forever until a new color cartridge is inserted.It would take too long to detail all the problems (lid open alarm when the lid is closed is the latest which compelled me to throw it away). I will never buy another Canon product again and I strongly advise anyone from buying this printer.

I really wanted a nice multifunction unit and would have paid more for one that was not so "needy."Good things first:1. The faxes sending is very good and it's nice to be able to send them through the automation feed to send things.2. The scanning is first class and flexible.Now the bad:1. If you share your fax line with your home line, the unit is almost 100% likely to start sending tones in the middle of an incoming voice call. There is no setting to turn off automatic incoming faxes.2. Unless you use the photographic setting, each and every page you print is printed in greys - no true blacks. And the photographic quality setting eats up the ink unlike any other printer I've had before. I mean REALLY eats up the ink, even if you have one of the high capacity cartridges.3. A packing peanut fell into my blank paper feeder and slowly fed bits of it into the mechanism as it turned around and around, and now I get a "replace CRT" every time I print. With no way to fish the thing out (I even turned the printer upside down) it was a frustrating event. As another user pointed out, it's a bit of a delicate flower - too much for it's own good.A real disappointment since I have had other really great Canon products before.

(I'm not going to repeat in detail what everybody else is saying here, but will emphasize my two complaints about this printer.)The loud clicks when the printer is "warming up" are rather annoying. Now I don't know if this is a defect in my printer or from wear over time, since I had this for more than 9 months.Quiet mode is not quite quiet. Sure during the printing, it's quieter, but I'm not so satisfied with the noises before and after the printing, i.e. the roller and the clicking sounds. Now I don't know if that's supposed to be for maintenance, but once again it's annoying. Minus one starThe printer is sort of an ink hog, or at least it's indicated such on my printer ink status. I have not yet tried bypassing the replace ink message by pressing and holding the Stop/Reset button for (what is it?) 5 seconds or so, but I'm assuming the ink won't last long after that. Minus another star.I'm not going to say much about the scanner, only that I find it a low-end standard scanner, meant for college students who want to scan whatever documents they have.Other than that, the all in one is good, but not great or amazing.